Video Gaming
Empathy for the Daemon, or are you a good simulator?
Mar 16th
Game designer Sid Meier, creator of the “Civilization” series of video games gave a talk recently called “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong).” His main thesis was that game designer have to understand the player’s psychology when designing the gameplay elements and gave some examples from his games which violated player More >
I Didn’t Join the Video Games Industry to Make Glorified Random Number Generators
Mar 8th
I said that last night while discussing the state of Flash/Facebook games with my friend David. Cracked.com has a great article explaining some of the techniques video games use to keep players engaged. Notice that I said engaged, not entertained. They are two different things. Games used to want players to have fun so they More >
How iPad Multitasking Might Work
Feb 10th
There has been much complaining on the web about how iPad doesn’t support multitasking, and little analysis of why Apple doesn’t allow it. Adam C. Engst wrote up a great analysis of the types of benefits that multitasking can provide and what technology is required to achieve those benefits. I’d like to approach the question More >
Making Games Look Fun
Oct 18th
Video games are suppose to be fun to play, but what about to watch? A famous name in Japan’s video game culture is Takahashi-meijin who’s special gift is making games look fun. In shooting games, if you want to get high scores, you shoot the enemies as soon as they appear on the screen, but More >
Game Developers Are From Mercury and Marketing Is From Neptune
Sep 20th
One of the big bogeymen in stories that developers tell each other is the “Marketing Department.” The story always ends up the same way, “and then we had to change the game … for the worse.” If you read any developer’s blogs, it is clear that most don’t hold marketing in high esteem. They are More >
Why Carmack’s iPhone Visual Tour De Force Will Flop
Aug 7th
Two words, “Battery Life.” I have no doubts about Mr. Carmack’s technical ability. His games defined ‘cutting edge’ graphics on the PC for many years. But even he can’t fight against the biggest weakness of the iPhone, a short battery life. Related posts Why Sky High Development Budget is Good for Publishers (0) The Economic More >
Why the Games Industry Needs E3
Jul 19th
Apprently it is news to some people that E3 is dead. I wrote my own eulogy to E3 a couple of month ago, around the time E3 is suppose to take place. The real E3, not whatever just happened last week. E3 was important to the industry because it represented gaming as a “Culture” and More >
Cast of Characters pt 2 : the Broken
Jul 2nd
If you want to work in the games industry, know that it is filled with geeky guys. Be prepared to put up with a certain amount of ‘eccentricities.’ In this series, I offer up a sampling of the types of people you might meet in your journey. Last time I talked about the ‘Burnout’, this More >
Make Better Games by Reducing Interactivity
Jun 29th
Most people believe that interactivity is what separates games from other kinds of media, so how can you make games better by taking away that advantage? Back when we were creating the interface on BioShock, Ken was the one who always pushed for a simpler interface. The main method we used was to remove options More >